A Class Action lawsuit has been filed following a massive privacy breach at Family and Children’s Services of Lanark, Leeds and Grenville earlier this week that saw the names of 285 families involved with children’s services leaked on Facebook.

The class action filed Thursday morning in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on behalf of a person identified only as M.M. names the agency, its executive director, Children and Youth Servivces Minister Tracy MacCharles and John Doe – the person responsible for sharing the information – as defendants.

The lawsuit calls for $25-million in general damages, $25-million in special damages and $25-million in punitive, aggravated and exemplary damages on behalf of M.M. the families whose names were shared in a document on the Smiths Falls Swapshop and Families United Facebook pages earlier this week.

“This is a very serious breach of privacy, made possible by the Family and Children’s Services of Lanark, Leeds and Grenville,” said Sean Brown of Flaherty McCarthy LLP in Toronto. “That institution made the decision to use an on-line portal system that was easily accessed by an individual without any obvious hacking skills. The most sensitive and confidential information held by that body, specifically the names of those under its investigation, have now been published on the Internet. The damage has been done. That bell can not be unrung.”

The statement of claim alleges negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, breach of confidence, negligent misrepresentation, intrusion upon seclusion, breach of statutory duty, misfeasance, and/or failure to act on the part of the defendant.

It alleges also states the defendants “owed the plaintiff and each class member a duty of care to ensure that their personal, confidential and identifying information remained confidential and was not disclosed” and that they “knew or ought to have known, that their substandard method of the maintenance of the confidential information and the security of same were such that it was inevitable, or at least probable, that the confidential information would likely be stolen or otherwise disclosed, in breach of their duty.”

The allegations have yet to be proven in court.